Awards presented to county winners of New Groups section of ACCBank EBI Discussion Group Competition

The local winning ‘new’ Dairy Discussion Groups in the ACCBank EBI competition were presented with their prizes at Teagasc Moorepark on Tuesday, 14 June.

Over 100 ‘new’ discussion groups entered the new groups section of the ACCBank EBI discussion group competition. Speaking at the event, Teagasc Head of Dairy Knowledge Transfer, Tom O’Dwyer said: “Today’s event marks the latest development in the EBI Competition which has been running for six years. The competition partners recognised the need to have a separate section for the great number of new groups formed in 2010, as a consequence of the Dairy Efficiency Programme. The standard of performance, in this section, was high and 21 local winners were identified.” Referring to the benefits of entering the competition, he said: “Each participating group received a scoresheet which rated their group’s performance under two categories: breeding quantity and breeding quality. This scoresheet can be used by groups to set breeding targets for 2011 and future years.”

Sean Farrell, National Agri-Manager at ACCBank congratulated all the new groups which took part saying: “ACCBank is delighted to be associated with this competition which clearly rewards excellence in terms of breeding performance on dairy farms. We wish to congratulate each local group winner and to keep up the good work that today’s award has recognised.”

A key aspect of this part of the competition was the availability of herd fertility and breeding data which was made available by competition partners, ICBF.

The EBI competition promotes better breeding on dairy farms. Its €42,000 prize fund was sponsored by ACCBank and the competition is run in association with Teagasc, ICBF and the Irish Farmers’ Journal.